


Calculations

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, geeky love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2648678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Eddie’s awkward jokes are really awkward attempts to flirt</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calculations

**Author's Note:**

> Oh Eddie, bless you for straddling the line between creepy and heartbreaking.

“Hey, detective, did you know that–”

“Not now, Ed.”

Edward Nygma blinked six times in rapid succession. His face shut down and he moved mechanically down the halls. Knock-knock jokes not favorably received. Conclusion? Indefinite. Potential: limericks or off-color jokes. He pretended not to notice the beat cop who tensed noticeably and looked past him as he walked beside her for two steps.

 

“So, a biologist, a creationist, and Charles Darwin walk into a bar—”

“Eddie, please. Just the facts.”

No one had called him Eddie before. So casual. So _familiar_. He adjusted his glasses and tried not to look at the blue-eyed cop, at his strong jawline, the honest curve of his nose.

Nygma talked bones and bruises, sutures and scars, tattoos and tribal markings. The curt nod Gordon gave him was worth fifty gold stars on any essay.

 

“You ever go out, Ed?”

Edward has to focus on breathing, willing the flush away from his skin and forcing his respiration to become neutral as he asks, “why what do you mean, detective?”

“You know, out. Out. On the town.”

“As a date?”

There is a tremble in his voice, but as usual no one notices.

“I mean what do you do when you're not at the station, just sit home and read every book in the library?”

The question is not mocking, as Edward had come to expect through most of his life.

“I– _do_ go out. Sometimes.” he gives a breathless little laugh. “For the occasional—”

“What the hell am I looking at here, is that his face or his stab wound?”

“Oh—actually, that's pizza. He fell on it.” Eddie stammers, trying to recover, but the thread of conversation is lost, both detectives back in work mode.

 

Measure reactions. Less unfavorable looks, 30% reduced irritated shouting. Rating: 2% higher success rate.

Nygma noticed he had better luck when the detectives were alone. He had a higher success rate when it was Jim. His heartbeat increased 50% when he was alone with Gordon.

Jim's eyes were 5C90FF in hex code. Nygma changed his window scheme to match. Every time the detective leaned over to look at something, Eddie's heart would race, worried he'd notice.

Gordon wore bay rum aftershave and often didn't trim his nails. Sometimes he'd lean over to point and a jagged edge of his nail would catch on Eddie’s sleeve and his nose would be flooded with the scent of cologne and oh–

 

Conditions favorable. Jim sitting alone at his desk, no Bullock in sight. Bullock: an antiquated term for a castrated bull. Interesting.

Jim was looking at his phone with the dead stare of the preoccupied. James. From the Latin Iacomus. The most common male name in the US in 1990. Could be a surname or given name.

He was chewing on one of those stirring-sticks.

Gordon. Scottish in origin. Possibly fashioned after a location in Berwickshire.

The detective was playing hold 'em poker. Poker: derived from an earlier Persian card game. Popularized in the US in the later 1800's. 50 cards, four suits. The modern business suit developed during the British Regency period, most commonly made of wool. Jim wore a slate blue suit sometimes that made his eyes pop like phosphorous in the dark. Phosphorous, meaning light-bringer in Greek. Jim certainly had brought the light in with him. He was a good cop. A good detective. And...

“Detective?”

Jim looked up, blandly curious. He hadn't learned to wince when he looked up and found Edward, as everyone else in the department had.

“What do a dead man, a cruise ship, and an emu have in common?”

Jim was completely deadpan. “What?”

“It's...very important.”

Jim actually thought, bless his heart, rolling the riddle around in his head like it was a serious question.

“Well...this is probably the wrong answer, but...nothing?”

Had there been another answer? No matter, certainty was already filling Eddie like a shaft of light. He smiled, zygomatic major pulling so that his lips slid over his large incisors but it didn't matter.

“You got it.”

And Jim chuckled. Not in an angry or dismissive way, but with humor. He chuckled and shook his head a little, but he was smiling.

“You and your riddles, Ed.”

And Ed smiled as he walked away, shooed from the desk by Bullock as he took a cranky seat next to his partner. Him and his riddles. His riddles and he.

 

“Do you play video games detective?”

Gordon was slouched over in his chair, hands to his temples. There was a picture of Barbara on the desk before him. This was something he had taken to doing in lulls at the station, staring intently at his girlfriend's picture.”

“Video games?”

“Yes. Video games. I enjoy them.” _I think you might too. I know I’d really enjoy it if we played them together,_ he didn't say.

Gordon gave him a weary look. “I'm not in the mood right now, Ed.”

Eddie looked down, brain cogs whirring. In the mood. In the mood. The mood for what?

“I have those reports you asked for,” he said, laying them gingerly on Jim's desk. Jim sighed.

“Thanks.”

Eddie paused on the cusp of walking away, hands clenching and unclenching.

“ _DetectiveGordon_ ,” he blurted out.

Jim looked up, surprised. “Yeah, Ed?”

“Do you–I mean can you–is there anything you're doing,” Eddie stammered, “tonight?”

Jim looked puzzled.

“Are you alone? I mean, are you free?”

Jim’s gaze fell slowly on the picture before him, and his face shifted as he put the pieces of the puzzle together. As had sadly been true for most of Edward's life, he put them together wrong.

“Yeah,” Jim said, “but I have other things to take care of. Personal things. But thanks, Ed. I don't mean to moon over things so much.”

Eddie's stomach clenched in a wonderful, horrible way.

“Oh,” he said, “okay then.”

“Ed?” Jim said.

Eddie looked back.

Jim was looking at him with an expression so kind it hurt.

“Really, thank you,” he said, “thanks so much.”

Eddie's lips quirked at the corner.

“Jim,” he said.


End file.
